Luigi Legnani: Euridice, Opera di Sentimento per Violino e Chitarra

DGA Editions has published on June 21, 2025 the first modern edition of Luigi Legnani’s Euridice, Opera di Sentimento per Violino e Chitarra, originally published by Cipriani in Firenze around 1826.

Available from DGA Editions in print or digital format. Edited by Fabio Rossini, Aurelio Venanzi, and Loredana Bartolomei. 116 pages with introductions in English and Italian, newly engraved score and parts, plus a facsimile of the original edition. View a sample of the book at the DGA Editions website.

Digital edition link.

Print edition link.

Euridice, Opera di Sentimento is an interesting composition for violin and guitar by Luigi Rinaldo Legnani. It is a marvelous example of descriptive music, which for the first time is presented in a modern graphic design. Fabio Rossini and Aurelio Venanzi wanted to make this important chamber work musically performable, through a careful revision aimed at eliminating the errors of various kinds present in the nineteenth-century edition of Cipriani. The work is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and has a dense musical fabric in which the composer’s stylistic signature is evident. Both instruments are the protagonists according to their technical peculiarities: the appropriate melodic and harmonic choices, together with the rhythmic and suggestive timbres, guide the listener through the dramatic and famous episode, whose synthesis, titled Argomento, is introduced just before the musical pages of the guitar part in the historical Cipriani edition. Words and music constantly and efficiently return to the tragedy of loss, in line with Berlioz’s assertion when, about his Symphonie fantastique, he argued that the “program” should be regarded as the spoken parts of an opera, which serve as an introduction to the musical numbers by describing the situation that evokes the particular mood and expressive character of each.

Contents

• An Opera di Sentimento tells the drama of Eurydice
• Un’Opera di Sentimento racconta il dramma di Euridice
• Bibliography
• Synopsis of errors and inconsistencies in the original Cipriani Edition
• Sinossi degli errori e delle incongruenze presenti nella antica Edizione Cipriani
• Score
• Guitar Part
• Violin Part
• Guitar Facsimile
• Violin Facsimile